48 Hours - The Final Hours of Amie Harwick

Episode Date: February 13, 2022

Drew Carey opens up about the violent death of his onetime fiancée, Hollywood therapist Amie Harwick. Why Valentine’s Day will never be the same for CBS' "The Price is Right" host. "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty reports.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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ConstantContact.ca I think about Amy in the most positive ways. Obviously really beautiful. Like she was smart. She had a PhD, master's degree. She cared so much about helping people. That was her life's purpose. This is Dr. Amy Harwick, licensed marriage and family therapist. I think about her every single day.

It's the Price is Right. Here's your host, Drew Kelly! I'd like to introduce you to my brand new lovely fiance, Amy. How you doing, Amy? Have you ever had that rush of excitement when you meet somebody new? If this was this great love, then what happened? Well, you know, we had some problems and I finally just had to call it a day. You know, so it didn't work out, but they were still friends. They were still amicable. Breakups suck.

It's true. It's going to bring up feelings of anger, sadness. That's normal. Before she had finished her education and pursued her career path, and I knew her as this gorgeous fire dancer model. I was a professional dancer. I ate fire.

Just to get through school at the time. You don't have to have a significant impairment to see a therapist. She was one of my best friends. She was somebody that I went to a lot when I was confused or hurt or wanted advice. She's one of those once-in-a-lifetime friends. She called several of her closest friends to sort of let people know that she had run into this dangerous ex of hers. When is the last time you saw and talked to Amy Harwick? Amy and her friends came to my show.

Beauty of Burlesque for Valentine's Day. Was she happy that night? So happy. This picture was taken when? After the show in the lobby. That was our last conversation. I had asked her, I was like, please come to the after party with me.

And of course, maybe if she came with me, it would have changed the trajectory of events. Police say Harwick, a famed Hollywood therapist, was killed Saturday. She fought for six minutes, her last moments on earth for six minutes. She was found injured beneath a balcony at her Hollywood Hills home. The 38-year-old later died at the hospital. This case to me is a stalking case. Has everyone else kind of looking back through their exes,

going, is anyone capable of that? This is a man, if true, who is obsessing. When I heard that she got murdered, right away I thought, oh, it's got to be that guy. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military, and when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS.

Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still a virgin. It just happens to all of us. I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it,

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Did I get a trophy or something when I won this? Find out who on a new Celebrity Big Brother tomorrow on CBS. In the early morning hours of February 15, 2020, police found Amy Harwick, a high-profile family therapist, clinging to life beneath the balcony outside her home. therapist clinging to life beneath the balcony outside her home. As Amy was rushed to the hospital, investigators immediately questioned her traumatized roommate who had called 911. They set out to interview neighbors and look for surveillance camera video, anything to explain what had happened to her. Hours earlier, Amy's Valentine's Day had started peacefully with a sunrise hike with her friend, Cleopatra Slow.

So I got to her house. She invited me in because she still hadn't gotten ready yet. We went up to her bedroom, which was very beautiful. It had this nice balcony, all this natural light, and she was frantically getting ready. And at the last minute, she grabbed this little red cardigan sweater and said, it's Valentine's Day. I'm just going to throw this on. Amy acted as a local tour guide as they climbed the winding Hollywood Hill streets. as a local tour guide as they climbed the winding Hollywood Hill streets. She was pointing out all these different landmarks she liked, telling me different history about the neighborhood. They stopped for breakfast at the Beachwood Cafe.

She talked a lot about how happy she was, how she felt really accomplished and happy with where she was in life. Did she seem worried about anything that day? No. Did she talk about what her plans were that night? Yes. They were all going to a burlesque show. And she was really excited to get dressed up and go to that. What was she wearing that night?

She was wearing her rosary necklace and her leather jacket, her purse and her boots and a velvet dress. The necklace would later become a key piece of evidence. Amy's friend, known as Miss Tosh, says the burlesque show started around 7 p.m. They brought a little Kodak camera and taking all these film photos together. And I could see them even when I was on stage, just like cheering and standing. They were having the best time. Around the time that Amy and her friends were taking these pictures at the show, Amy's roommate, Michael Herman, asleep in

his room on the first floor, would later tell authorities he thought he heard the sound of a smashing plate. He thought it was Amy a floor above and drifted back to sleep. Investigators now believe it was an intruder breaking the glass of the French door to her home. breaking the glass of the French door to her home. In this moment, everybody, you know, looks happy and... We're all on a high of a thrill of, you know, celebrating the show and we were just having so much fun. Amy, still at the Globe Theatre, caught up with Miss Tosh in the lobby after the show around 9 p.m.

Miss Tosh asked her to come to the after party. She's like, no, I'm just going to have tea with my friends. And that was my last moment with her was just, you know, I love you. I'll see you again soon. Amy and her friends left the Globe Theater and they ended up here at the Nomad until 12.18 a.m. At around 1 a.m., Amy pulled into her driveway and she texted her friend Sarah Rollins to send pictures from the Nomad. The time is 1.02 a.m. is 102 a.m. Moments later, police believe she climbed the stairs to her third floor bedroom and was viciously attacked. Police theorize that Amy's assailant had been lying in wait for four

hours. Amy's roommate was jolted out of sleep by her screams. He later testified that he heard the sound of bodies falling to the floor and then more screams that seemed muffled as if somebody put a hand over her mouth. Unable to find his phone, Amy's roommate first just tries yelling to scare the assailant away. When he runs for help, he gets trapped inside the courtyard and has to scale this fence, When he runs for help, he gets trapped inside the courtyard and has to scale this fence, cutting himself. But he still makes it over to the neighbor, knocking repeatedly, and nobody comes to the door. It's now 1.08 a.m. Amy's roommate is frantic.

He then runs across the street, and again, no one answers the door. And then he sees someone walking up the street who happens to have a phone. They call for help. It's now 1.14 a.m. That's when police found Amy lying 20 feet below her bedroom balcony. She was struggling to breathe. Police noted that Amy had severe injuries and deep marks on her neck, signs that she had been strangled before she fell from the balcony. At 2.05 a.m., Sarah Rollins, who had no idea Amy was clinging to life, texted that photo of her on the green couch. But by then, Amy was on her way to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Hospital.

She died at 3.26 a.m. Inside her home, investigators discovered evidence of a violent struggle. There was blood on a bedroom door. There was also a trail of those rosary beads that she had been wearing earlier that night that went from her TV room through her bedroom and onto the balcony. And that's where they recovered a syringe like this one filled with liquid. Considering Amy did not smoke, drink, or do drugs, the syringe seemed out of place. Was it left by Amy's attacker? And why?

As dawn broke over Los Angeles on the morning after Valentine's Day in 2020... I'd say it was like the sun was ripped from the sky. Hearts began breaking. A well-known therapist was killed at her Hollywood Hills home. Amy Harwick's close friends, Cleopatra Slow. I didn't believe it. Grace Stanley. She's not there anymore.

And Robert Coshland. The police called me and said, hey, can you come down to the Hollywood station? We're hearing the news that the 38-year-old woman they loved and leaned on was gone. Word quickly reached her one-time fiance, too. I couldn't get Amy out of my head. Drew Carey, comedian and host of The Price is Right on CBS. In 2018, he introduced Amy to the world on the Valentine's Day edition of the show. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody! It was just two years before her death. You want an intimate relationship where you can open up to somebody completely, and she was that for me.

Tonight, Kerry is giving his first extensive television interview about Amy Harwick, a raw, honest account of unexpected love and unbearable loss. So how'd you meet her, and when did you meet her? I met her at a, there's a producer that would throw these like amazing big Hollywood parties. It was 2017. He says he saw stars all over the room that night, but especially when he saw Amy Harwick, who was moonlighting as a bartender. who was moonlighting as a bartender. Our first date, we went to Disneyland, and I was so amazed by her. I was telling people at work, I said, wow, I met this great girl. Her name's Amy. Like Drew, Amy Harwick had grown up in Middle America, in her case, a small Pennsylvania town. She'd been adopted and had at one point briefly been in foster care. As a teen, she was drawn to an offbeat crowd, as she later explained in this video for a company where she modeled.

It took a really long time for me to figure out who I was as a person. Like we would go to the bathroom and do our makeup together and skip class. The ladies' room wasn't just where Sharon Little and Amy Harwick went to goof off. It's where they first met. One day in 10th grade, Sharon says she was sobbing after hearing a close friend had died when someone she didn't know offered her a hug. She saw me crying. And she held me.

Both craving understanding. Sharon says they seem to understand each other instinctively. I felt like she knew exactly what I was feeling. Sharon, a musician, ended up in L.A., where Amy had settled in 2001, planning to get a psychology degree. But she needed money. She worked her way through college.

She worked, like, bartending, go dancing. She got gigs at nightclubs and parties around town. She was blooming. She was eating fires. She had a fire act that she would do and, like, really hustled. Amy's hustle and passion for personal growth eventually paid off. You might want to speak to this woman, Dr. Amy Harwick. Armed with a master's degree in clinical psychology and eventually a PhD in human sexuality,

she opened a private practice and worked with clients who were often shunned. I work with sex workers or people that maybe were previously sex workers. Hey, this is Dr. Amy Harwick. Amy brought her unique mix of compassion and charisma to a YouTube audience, too. You communicate what you're looking to do, what your boundaries are. Part of what made her so interesting, say friends,

were her own colorful interests. Taxidermy and things like that. Well, this is a collection of her poison bottles. I'm the one that got her the poison bottle set. But while Amy seemed to have a fascination with mortality... She was obsessed with death. And in fact, at one point she had bought her own coffin. She also had a zest for life and for living.

She did everything. And I don't know where she got the energy from. I felt so hard for her. You even said that you were lucky enough to have that love of a lifetime. What did you mean by that? It was. It felt like, oh, finally, there's like everything I ever wanted. He says Amy offered what any person would want, unconditional love. I have a lot of body issues, but the way I look, and, but I would like take my shirt off around her and not care.

She would love me like she didn't care. She just always thought I was sexy and hot. They got engaged in 2017. We had a great time together. We would be, you know, in the kitchen and just start dancing while we were cooking. But there were serious problems, too. There'd be an article like, oh, Drew Carey and Amy Harwick had a thing. The couple's celebrity outings sometimes brought unwanted attention to Amy.

Then the next day, two days later, there'd be something. Something would almost always appear online. Negative anonymous comments on websites that reviewed doctors, he says. And Amy feared her reputation as a therapist would be ruined. She was convinced they were written by a jealous ex-boyfriend. His name? Gareth Pursehouse. And she's like, ah, I wish you weren't famous. If this was this great love and you guys so meshed, what happened?

Well, you know, we had some problems and I don't want to get into it. It was really painful. But Carrie told us they tried hard to make it work. Went to therapy as much as we could and, you know, finally just had to call it a day. I mean, it was really upsetting for both of us. Friends say the breakup was amicable and the couple eventually fell out of touch. and the couple eventually fell out of touch. But Carey, by then in a new relationship,

says he was thrilled when on the night before Valentine's Day in 2020, Amy suddenly reached out with a text. I said, hey, I would love to get together with you and talk. And I said, yeah, I would love to do that. I love you. Are you sad you never got that chance? I never got it. Each of Amy's friends handles her death in a different way. But when asked who they thought would hurt her, one name came to mind. My best friend is terrified of one person.

It's Gareth. She thought he was dangerous. She did, because she knew thought he was dangerous. She did. Because she knew what he was capable of. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own.

She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marcia Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informants Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror

movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. Robert Coshland went down to the Hollywood police station and told investigators what he knew about Gareth Pursehouse, an ex-boyfriend Amy had dated years before. He was a software engineer, a wannabe comedian. Here he is. One more time for Gareth, everybody. Come on. I have bad news for the entertainers over there. The best day of your career is going to be the days after you die. And photographer.

Your career is going to be the days after you die. And photographer. They asked who I thought might have done this. Did she have any enemies? This ex of hers, Gareth. If anyone would be the person, it would be this guy. Robert also told them that Amy said Gareth had assaulted her on more than one occasion. 48 Hours tracked down numerous police reports and two restraining orders that Amy obtained against Gareth.

So this is what she wrote in April 2011. Gareth Pursehouse forced me to the ground, covered my mouth to prevent my yelling, kicked me. In mid-May, there were multiple arguments in which Gareth Pursehouse choked me, suffocated me, pushed me against walls, kicked me, dropped me to the ground with forced force, restrained me, slammed my head into the ground, and punched me with a closed fist. They would get in, like, yelling fights, and one time she threw a pillow at him

and he hit her and bashed her head against the floor. And then immediately he would make up and be all like, I'm really sorry and I love you and all this kind of stuff. But it was a very different relationship when the couple first started dating, as Grace Stanley remembers. Grace says that Amy introduced her to Gareth back in 2008 at a photo shoot for Bench Warmer trading cards. Back then, Amy was a model going by the name Amy Nicole.

It was very obvious when I met him that he was taken by her, always taking pictures of her. I honestly think she was looking for the nice guy, the safe guy, that he was taken by her, always taking pictures of her. I honestly think she was looking for the nice guy, the safe guy, the guy who wasn't going to break her heart or cheat on her, and when there's somebody who is that into you, you don't think that they're going to hurt you.

He was loud, charming, a little goofy. I'm going to break you apart. Gareth posted videos on social media. Grace says there was no sign of a relationship in trouble in the beginning, but something now strikes her as strange. I never saw her and him together while they were dating, and I kind of wonder if he was kind of keeping her away from her friends. Eventually, Amy could no longer hide the signs of abuse. Friends say she started documenting her injuries. These photos come from a police report.

He was hurting her. Does that fit the Amy you know? To stay in a bad situation like that? Actually, yes, it does. Yeah. She really would want to make relationships work, even if they weren't working for her. She did not like to lose. So I think a relationship breaking up, and I can understand this, would feel like a loss of some sort. And she was very much about maintaining things that she had, even if they weren't good. I just remember doing the friend thing where you're just like, leave him.

Leave him. Like, that's not a relationship you want to stay in. And how did she react to you saying, get out of that relationship? Oh, she agreed. She absolutely agreed. Amy finally ended their relationship in 2012. Gareth didn't take that very well at all. He would start to get obsessive. He always wanted to know where she was at.

He used to want me to be his go-between, which I did not want to do. He'd always ask me to send her photos, send her links to sappy love songs, and he wouldn't take no for an answer. And he just kind of blew up and said, you have to pick, it's either me or her. And I went with her, and and after that he cut me off. And the video today is on how to survive the breakup

after that first 30 days. Amy was determined to move on from Gareth and not only did she survive, she thrived. But nearly four years after their breakup, someone broke into her home. She called me, she's like, I think he broke into my house and stole my photo albums and my computer. There's something wrong with my computer.

Can you come look at it? It had been wiped. She believed it was him. She couldn't prove it. She didn't have cameras. She felt as though maybe he was watching. Somehow he could maybe have bugged her things. Amy was convinced that Gareth was behind

some of the insulting and derogatory online comments that she had been getting for years. Gareth had also sent messages to her friends designed to sabotage her friendships. It seemed ridiculous. Surely he's moved on by now. But then on January 16, 2020, they crossed paths for the first time in eight years. The prominent sex therapist received a last-minute invite to the annual XBiz Awards, an adult film industry gala. That's where she spotted Gareth working the event. She tried to stay calm, but she later told Robert that when Gareth saw her,

he went ballistic. He was yelling in her face, you ruined my life, and reciting text messages she had sent to him in 2012 and like, you know, created a giant scene. There's like a hundred people in this room and he is screaming. He's working the event. He's this big guy and he's screaming at her, sobbing, falls to the ground in the fetal position, wailing. After the show, Amy spent 45 minutes speaking privately with Gareth, away

from everyone, but still within view of security guards. She told me she went into therapist mode, tell him he needs to get on with his life, but in a non-confrontational as best possible way. She felt like she had talked him down, but she was unnerved by the whole thing. After that, she was like,

I want to share my phone location with you, or if anything ever happens to me, it's him. She wanted to up the security in her house. She wanted pepper spray. She was taking the steps of somebody who was scared. Two weeks after the run-in with Gareth, Amy called her parents with an unexpected request. She actually told them that if I die, I want to have an open casket funeral, and I want an elaborate headstone and all of like very explicit wishes.

Then, just a day before Valentine's Day 2020, there was that text from Amy reaching out to Drew. I was really happy. I was like, oh, it'd be great to see her again. But Drew would never hear from Amy again. Robert Koshland would deliver the heartbreaking news. And he goes, hey, Amy was murdered. And I just started like, what? And I just started crying. And I just couldn't even stand up. And, you know, I didn't think that was possible.

News of Amy's death exploded across the country. Officers rushed out early Saturday morning after getting 911 calls. Harwick's ex-boyfriend, 41-year-old Gareth Pursehouse, is suspected of her murder. And within hours, detectives tracked down Gareth Pursehouse at his home and charged him with her murder. Now prosecutors set out to build their case against him. It's going to be a fight. In September 2021, a year and a half after his arrest,

Gareth Pursehouse appeared at the Los Angeles Superior Court for a preliminary hearing. Rudy Torres, once Gareth's good friend, wanted to be there for Amy. You want to know what those last moments were like for her. And you just need to be there because someone has to be in that room for her. Cameras were not allowed inside the hearing itself, where a judge would determine if there was enough evidence to try Purse House for the murder of Amy Harwick. You know, there's no such thing as a slam dunk case, ever. Rhonda Saunders was a deputy district attorney in L.A. for 33 years.

She's not involved in this case, but reviewed court records at our request. At the hearing, prosecutors discussed Amy's autopsy, which documents apparent defensive wounds on her arms and hands. There was also a pattern of broken blood vessels around Amy's eyes called petechia, which can be evidence of strangulation. There not only were the petechiae, but there were bruises on her neck. But was Gareth Pursehouse the intruder on the night of February 14, 2020? Prosecutors presented evidence of DNA recovered from the French door and the living room floor, which they said was a match to Pursehouse. The word of the day was septillion.

That's a one with 24 zeros. Most of the stuff went over my head, but I remember septillion. Torres is correct. Investigators said the chance that the DNA belonged to anyone other than Purse House was less than one in one septillion. And perhaps more disturbing, they say Purse House's DNA was on Amy's fingernails. Torres says he's disturbed by the idea of Amy's last moments alive, the roughly six minutes after she sent her last text and before her roommate knocked on the neighbor's door for help. Six minutes. Her last moments on earth were six minutes. That's probably the most scary part of all this,

that she doesn't sound like a long time, but she fought for six minutes. At the hearing, the defense questioned whether that DNA was collected and tested correctly, and they questioned whether Purse House was there at all. Still, a neighbor's home security video from the night of Valentine's Day, played in court, shows an intruder that Torres believes is Purse House. Just hand over the camera so it doesn't see him, but we know somebody for that long.

It's like seeing somebody in the distance. It looked like him. Gareth Purse House pleaded not guilty and his defense attorneys argue that none of the evidence collected by the state proves murder. They say even if that intruder was Pursehouse, and they don't agree it was, he could have gone there just to talk to Amy and her fall off the balcony could have been an accident. That's ridiculous. He's tall, and she's tiny. She's unmatched in any way you can quantify. He may have wanted to say some things to her, but I think he went there to kill her. Then there's that syringe, like this one, that police say they found on Amy's balcony. Lab tests later revealed it contained nicotine,

which can be a lethal poison. Robert Koshland believes that syringe could only have been there for one reason. That just really, I think, showed that he had intent, murderous intent, because there's no benign reason to have a syringe of nicotine ever. Although very rare, there have been murder cases involving lethal doses of nicotine,

notably one that 48 Hours covered, the case of Paul Curry, who was found guilty of the 1994 poisoning of his wife, Linda, with the toxin. If you take it orally by mouth or by skin, then it takes much longer because absorption takes a while. But if you have it intravenously, then you can die within minutes. Dr. Neil Benowitz, a leading expert on nicotine, who wrote a report about the Harwick case, spoke to us in 2014 about how someone could make a high concentration solution of the drug. This would be a concentrated nicotine solution that could

kill somebody. Police say they later found a syringe in Purse House's home similar to the one filled with nicotine. Prosecutors argued that the presence of that poison at Amy's home is evidence of Purse House's murderous intentions. The prosecutor has to show that intent to harm her, to kill her. Why else would there be a syringe with that toxin in it? At the hearing, Amy's friends testified about her fear of Purse House and the measures she had taken, including the home security system, buying pepper spray, and allowing Robert Koshland to track her phone. After her death, Robert located Amy's email password and says he found what may be the most haunting evidence against

Purse House, written by Amy herself. You found something in her Gmail that became very important, didn't it? Yes. Amy used her email to document her frightening encounter with Purse House at the X-Biz Awards show. She wrote, Started screaming. You shouldn't be here. Why are you here? He was sobbing. He was distorting his face up and shaking violently. What does that say to you, that that kind of reaction was just

running into a woman that he has not had contact with for years? This was terrifying to her. She should have been terrified because that's not normal. Forensic psychologist Chris Mohandy. This email is a voice of what Amy Harwick was experiencing. In it, she also writes, it terrifies me that he's been obsessed with me for nine years. He's malicious, highly intelligent, and focused on harming me. What that email shows is that there is no way after writing that even to herself that she would have invited him over, that she would have had anything to do with him, that she was afraid of him. The question now is for the judge to decide. Is there enough evidence to take Gareth Pursehouse

to trial? Amy's friends have no doubts. Do you think she fell off the balcony? No. No. No. No, not at all. She literally told me, if anything ever happens to me, it's Gareth. She said those exact words to me. What do you make of the evidence in this case? Learn more about Amy's last days at 48hours.com. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy

about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bold risk-takers who brought them to life. Like, did you know that Super Mario, the best selling video game character of all time, only exists because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye? Or Jack, that the idea for the McDonald's Happy Meal first came from a mom in Guatemala? From Pez dispensers to Levi's 501s to Air Jordans, discover the surprising stories of the most viral products.

Plus, we guarantee that after listening, you're going to dominate your next dinner party. So follow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+. It's just the best idea yet. you know she'd had other relationships that hadn't ended well but they never came up amy's close friend grace stanley also testified at the gareth purse house hearing

about texts she had from amy relaying her about him. She never really liked to text much about Gareth. She certainly didn't like to use his name. Why? Did she think he might see it? She felt as though maybe he was watching somehow. She'd always felt that. After six days of evidence and arguments, the judge ruled there was more than enough to bind Pursehouse over for trial for the murder of Amy Harwick.

Will you go to the trial? Yes. There's a small group of us, and we've agreed that no matter what, there will always be somebody in that room for her. Sharon Little intends to be there, too. I want the judge to see how important she was and I want to be there for her. Psychologist Chris Mohandy thinks the state's case against Purcells, if true, reflects a deep obsession with Amy, first documented in those long ago police reports

that was reignited after that chance encounter on the red carpet. There may have been a lull through these years, but at that awards event, it got the pursuit started all over again. Pursehouse has not been charged with stalking and has pleaded not guilty to Amy's murder. But Chris Mohandy believes that if the state's allegations are true, his alleged crime would fit the pattern of what he calls obsessional pursuit. He also says that it's likely that Amy was responding to Gareth with sympathy and not only out of concern for her own safety. In hindsight, was it a mistake for her to try to calm him down, diffuse the situation? I'm not sure I would call it a mistake for her to try to calm him down, diffuse the situation?

I'm not sure I would call it a mistake. I would call her decision to talk with him twice that evening, to try to calm him, to be her humanity. However, the safest course of action for stalking victims, Mohandi says, is never to engage their stalker if they can help it. Well-meant human kindness can be twisted by stalkers' delusions and fuel their rage. And that rage, they don't heal from it. It becomes this living thing that they nurture and feed. And what you see in this case, if true, is a nine-year window of that.

Amy's friends say she was never going to let her fear of Purse House shut down her life. You can't live your life in fear. And if you want to live in fear, you're giving that person And if you want to live in fear, you're giving that person control over you. And that's not who she was. She was her own person, and she was going to control her own destiny. And she would never give him that power, ever. It's almost two years. The pain has not gone away, has it?

No. I don't think it ever will. Is Valentine's Day hard for you? Terrible. Yeah. Yeah Is Valentine's Day hard for you? Terrible. Yeah. Yeah, Valentine's Day sucks now. That's not a good day to remember. Do you have regrets?

Yeah. I think we all do. You know, you always think, I could have done more. I should have done more. I should have been there. I should have listened more. But one thing Rudy Torres is clear on is what he can do now. He calls on other men to join him.

A lot of this is a problem because men need to hold other men accountable. Drew Carey says he hopes Amy's death and the attention it has received will help bring more awareness to intimate partner violence and the very real dangers of stalking. You can't be a person in this country and not know a woman who hasn't been a victim of domestic violence. You just can't. And it's really a problem that not enough people acknowledge. What will you miss about her the most?

Is there one thing that you just think? Her. Just her. Her, you know, sitting next to me. I hear her voice in my head every day. Every time I feel depressed and I don't feel like getting up in the morning, I just say, she can't get up. You've got to do it for her. You've got to get up for her. Amy's parents shared a statement saying they are thankful to many of Amy's close friends who attend court hearings and update us on those proceedings.

Their hope is that 2022 will bring justice for Amy and will focus on her life, her work, and her accomplishments. She cared so much about helping people. That was her life's purpose. She just wanted to help people, especially women. You really miss her, don't you? It's like I may have lost a friend, and a lot of us lost a friend. But she was en route to just help so many people. In her chosen field, she helped so many women, and she would have helped so many more.

It's more than me just losing a friend. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey.